In his award-winning book, Exclusion & Embrace, Bosnian-born theologian Miroslav Volf says, "It may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference."...Where articles of belief threaten to set people in opposition to one another, we may embody articles of peace. Where difference is demonized, we may host suppers with surprising guest lists...We may test the premise that God uses the weak to confound the strong as well as the promise that the God who made others different from us is revealed in them as well as us.
~ from AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD by Barbara Brown Taylor
WARM AUTUMN GREETINGS, dear friends! every season is a new opportunity for soul-growth. As we enter our times of silence and prayer, may we be mindful that the condition of our planet is a reflection of the consciousness of the World-Soul. As our own soul grows in peace, harmony, and love, it radiates blessing to the World-Soul ... a daily gift we can offer to ALL.
Soul-making is allowing the eternal essence to enter and experience the outer world through all the senses of the body — seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching — so that the soul grows during its time on Earth. Soul-making is constantly confronting the paradox that an eternal being is dwelling in a temporal body.
~ from LEAVING MY FATHER'S HOUSE by Marion Woodman
The soul of an individual is the longing inside each person for a greater sense of belonging, for a new country. We go through most workdays forgetting that this grand migratory force exists within us. We may feel a small satisfaction in a step taken, while the soul feels as if it is anchored off the promised land, wit just a short row to bring it home. At the level of our souls, no matter the difficulty in our work, or the responsibilities, or the possibility of failure, entire new worlds are coming into being.
In our soul's Magnificat, we become conscious of the cosmos with us. We hear the music of peace, we hear the music of cooperation, we hear the music of love. In our soul's forgetting, we become unconscious of our cosmic birthright, plighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars.
I hear the bells! It seems as though they are inviting me to rise higher than this earth into infinite spaces where there is nothing but Thou. I should like to be utterly silent . . . O my God, may I live entirely within, in the cell Thou are building in my heart. Establish my soul in peace; make it Thy cherished abode, the place of Thy rest. Let me never leave Thee there alone, but remain ever there absorbed in Thee in living faith and wholly yielded up Thy creative action!
There are great treasures in the soul: there's faith and love, there's awe and wisdom. All these things you can dig — but if you don't know where to dig, you dig up mud. If you want to get to the gold — awe before God, and the silver — the love, and the diamonds — the faith, then you have to find the geologist of the soul who tells you where to dig. But the digging you have to do yourself.
To direct a soul is to lead it in the ways of God, is to teach the soul to listen for Divine inspiration, and to respond to it; it is to suggest to the soul the practice of all the virtues proper for its particular state; it is not only to preserve that soul in purity and innocence, but to help it advance in wholeness: in a word, it is to contribute as much as possible in raising that soul to the degree of sanctity destined for it.
Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to meet us everywhere Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul humanity ever took — Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise Is exploration into God.
